Miss Death

For Ann, my personal astrologer

All text taken from Dec/Jan 2007 Cosmo Girl  p. 161-9

Happy Birthday, Miss Death.
Now you are free
To lose it all –

Your present, your future,
Your smoked-crystal psyche,
The courage that dances

In the heavenly body
You cannot see.  Don’t blow it
All in one day.  One day

You may actually want
What is now a mesh
Of forfeit love and unmet destiny.

These days it’s all about the family
You don’t know how
To lose.  Death

Is the tool you use
To evolve your independence
From the foreign body

In which you live,
A habit you can trust, a jump on the future,
A chainlink necklace

Of rage and enlightenment.
You allow yourself
To get closer and closer,

To swim to and from,
White and gold, beaded
With forever.  Flirt

As many times as you like
But you can only enter once.
Your body will not be returned

And you’ll need it very soon
To taste the universe
You’ve been daydreaming about

Under the cumulative mistletoe
Of life.  You still don’t know
How to see it, smell it,

Give it to your friends.  Love flows
Into heavenly signs, magnetic insights,
Snowflakes of possibility

Merging into the person
You’ve never been. 
Planets crowd your body and soul.

You want to give in,
To feel more, eat more,
To make room

For the new you,
Transparent but present,
Like the new moon.  Death lights

Your house of life,
A rhinestone sun, an inner home
Where you don’t feel compromised. 

Life is a lightning bolt
Attached with safety pins.
You know how to lose it.

by Joy Ladin